Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Hilarious.

I came across this article called "Surviving Whole Foods" in the Huffington Post. I love Whole Foods, but this is a whole different take. Thanks to Kelly MacLean.

Whole Foods is like Vegas. You go there to feel good but you leave
broke, disoriented, and with the newfound knowledge that you have a
vaginal disease.

Unlike Vegas, Whole Foods' clientele are all about mindfulness and
compassion... until they get to the parking lot. Then it's war. As I
pull up this morning, I see a pregnant lady on the crosswalk holding
a baby and groceries. This driver swerves around her and honks. As he
speeds off I catch his bumper sticker which says 'NAMASTE'. Poor lady
didn't even hear him approaching because he was driving a Prius. He
crept up on her like a panther.

As the great, sliding glass doors part I am immediately smacked in
the face by a wall of cool, moist air that smells of strawberries and
orchids. I leave behind the concrete jungle and enter a cornucopia of
organic bliss; the land of hemp milk and honey. Seriously, think
about Heaven and then think about Whole Foods; they're basically the
same.

The first thing I see is the great wall of kombucha -- 42
different kinds of rotten tea. Fun fact: the word kombucha is
Japanese for 'I gizzed in your tea.' Anyone who's ever swallowed the
glob of mucus at the end of the bottle knows exactly what I'm talking
about. I believe this thing is called "The Mother" which
makes it that much creepier.

Next I see the gluten-free section filled with crackers and bread
made from various wheat-substitutes such as cardboard and sawdust. I
skip this aisle because I'm not rich enough to have dietary
restrictions. Ever notice that you don't meet poor people with
special diet needs? A gluten intolerant house cleaner? A cab driver
with Candida? Candida is what I call a rich, white person problem.
You know you've really made it in this world when you get Candida. My
personal theory is that Candida is something you get from too much
hot yoga. All I'm saying is if I were a yeast, I would want to live
in your yoga pants.

Next I approach the beauty aisle. There is a scary looking machine
there that you put your face inside of and it tells you exactly how
ugly you are. They calculate your wrinkles, sun spots, the size of
your pores, etc. and compare it to other women your age. I think of
myself attractive but as it turns out, I am 78 percent ugly, meaning
less pretty than 78 percent of women in the world. On the popular
1-10 hotness scale used by males the world over, that makes me a 3
(if you round up, which I hope you will.) A glance at the extremely
close-up picture they took of my face, in which I somehow have a
glorious, blond porn mustache, tells me that 3 is about right.
Especially because the left side of my face is apparently 20 percent
more aged than the right. Fantastic. After contemplating ending it
all here and now, I decide instead to buy their product. One bottle
of delicious smelling, silky feeling creme that is maybe going to
raise me from a 3 to a 4 for only $108 which is a pretty good deal
when you think about it.

I grab a handful of peanut butter pretzels on my way out of this
stupid aisle. I don't feel bad about pilfering these bites because of
the umpteen times that I've overpaid at the salad bar and been
tricked into buying $108 beauty creams. The pretzels are very
fattening but I'm already in the seventieth percentile of ugly so who
cares.

Next I come to the vitamin aisle which is a danger zone for any
broke hypochondriac. Warning: Whole Foods keeps their best people in
this section. Although you think she's a homeless person at first,
that vitamin clerk is an ex-pharmaceuticals sales rep. Today she
talks me into buying estrogen for my mystery mustache and Women's
Acidophilus because apparently I DO have Candida after all.

I move on to the next isle and ask the nearest Whole Foods clerk
for help. He's wearing a visor inside and as if that weren't douchey
enough, it has one word on it in all caps. Yup, NAMASTE. I ask him
where I can find whole wheat bread. He chuckles at me "Oh, we
keep the poison in aisle 7." Based solely on the attitudes of
people sporting namaste paraphernalia today, I'd think it was
Sanskrit for "go fuck yourself."

I pass the table where the guy invites me to join a group cleanse
he's leading. For $179.99 I can not-eat not-alone...
not-gonna-happen. They're doing the cleanse where you consume nothing
but lemon juice, cayenne pepper and fiber pills for 10 days, what's
that one called again? Oh, yeah...anorexia. I went on a cleanse once;
it was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I detoxified, I purified, I
lost weight. On the other hand, I fell asleep on the highway,
fantasized about eating a pigeon, and crapped my pants. I think I'll
stick with the whole eating thing.

I grab a couple of loaves of poison, and head to checkout. The
fact that I'm at Whole Foods on a Sunday finally sinks in when I join
the end of the line...halfway down the dog food aisle. I suddenly
realize that I'm dying to get out of this store. Maybe it's the
lonely feeling of being a carnivore in a sea of vegans, or the
newfound knowledge that some people's dogs eat better than I do, but
mostly I think it's the fact that Yanni has been playing literally
this entire time. Like sensory deprivation, listening to Yanni seems
harmless at first, enjoyable even. But two hours in, you'll chew your
own ear off to make it stop.

A thousand minutes later, I get to the cashier. She is 95 percent
beautiful. "Have you brought your reusable bags?" Fuck. No,
they are at home with their 2 dozen once-used friends. She rings up
my meat, alcohol, gluten and a wrapper from the chocolate bar I ate
in line, with thinly veiled alarm. She scans my ladies acidophilus,
gives me a pitying frown and whispers, "Ya know, if you wanna
get rid of your Candida, you should stop feeding it." She rings
me up for $313. I resist the urge to unwrap and swallow whole another
$6 truffle in protest. Barely. Instead, I reach for my wallet, flash
her a quiet smile and say, "Namaste."

4 comments:

Yes, this is so funnily true. I have to tell you, the other day the young girl at my local fabric store did not want to give me a plastic bag. I said to her, if I told you that I didn't drive today so I've not contributed to pollution, would that make you feel better? She assure me it would....True story!!!